Wagner’s Tannhäuser receives a new staging from director Francesca Zambello, with Houston the first city to experience her strikingly beautiful production. Lust and love, diametrically opposed forces in the opera’s universe, do battle within the title character’s psyche as the story unfolds. At curtain’s open, Tannhäuser has abandoned his life as a poet who sings of courtly love in favor of the carnal delights of the goddess Venus, spending a rapture-filled year on her magic mountain in the sky. Seeking something more, he renounces her, hoping to find redemption - and a union back home in Germany with his spiritual love Elisabeth. But his epic journey to salvation has been cursed.